Anyone who has read this journal for any length of time at all knows
that I am obsessed with recording the special events, as well as the mundane events, in my
life with photos and now with video. But, you know? Sometimes it's just nice
to sit back and watch it all happen, without hiding behind the camera.

We are now home from our whirlwind trip to Southern California for
the taping of four Says You radio shows and I have only a handful of photos to
show for the trip, and none of those is particularly good. But I sure have a wealth
of memories of the lovely time that it was.

This morning started with a Grand Slam breakfast at the Dennys
attached to the motel. We thought we might take in the Bob Dylan exhibit at the
Skirball Cultural Center, where the Says You tapings were taking place, but there
really wasn't time. By the time we got to Skirball, "the faithful" were
already lining up to pick up their pre-ordered tickets (the show was sold out). By
the time the doors opened, they filled the 300 seat hall.

One woman, who definitely qualified as a hard core groupie, let us
know in no uncertain terms that she was first in line. She had been to see
the group in Raleigh No. Carolina and now in Los Angeles, but she missed the taping in her
home town of Seattle. But she was an expert in All Things Says You and
wanted to make sure we all knew it.

Walt and I sat with a lovely couple from San Francisco, who had also
been to the previous years' tapings. So we were not the only ones to have come such
a long distance.

While we were waiting, Tony Kahn passed by on his way from the Bob
Dylan exhibit to the green room, and we all chatted for awhile again. One topic was
Tony's six part show, Blacklisted, originally produced in 1996, which is
available to hear or download
from the WGBH web site.

Tony's father was screen writer Gordon Kahn, whom J. Edgar Hoover,
called "one of the three most dangerous Communists in Hollywood," and put him on
his "security index," a secret list of people to be placed in armed detention
camps in the event of a national securityemergency.Gordon Kahn
spent Tony's growing up years shuttling his family back and forth between Mexico and the
United States, always under the watchful eye of J. Edgar Hoover, trying to feed his family
by writing under various nom de plumes. The experience of growing up in such an
environment related by Kahn and a host of top notch actors (Carol O'Connor is Hoover, for
example) is both riveting and an amazing piece of theatre. I highly recommend checking it
out, if you remember living through that period, and even more strongly if you are too
young to remember. Hear what it was like for the families of the victims of the
witchhunt which was conducted in this country for fifteen years and find out the secret
Kahn kept during all those years.

...but back to Says You...

The other panelists: Carolyn Faye Fox,
Arnie Riesman and Paula Lyons

As it was yesterday, the show was just so much fun. And of
course we came away with a bunch of esoteric facts, like learning about the Pando aspen
grove in the Fishlake National Forest in Utah, determined to be part of a single living
organism by identical genetic markers and one massive underground root system. The plant
is estimated to weigh collectively 6,615 tons, making it the heaviest known organism. The
root system of Pando is claimed by some to be among the oldest known living organisms in
existence at 80,000 years of age.

I also want to commit to memory the term "clem" which is
the state of being very hungry!

Once again, first grader Benjamin Sher, son of moderator Richard
Sher, was one of the scorekeepers and again I was reminded of how much he looked like a
very young John Denver.

The neat thing about Says You is that it is really a
comprehensive word game. If you can't do all that well on astronomy or other science
questions, or aren't too clear on your sports trivia, just wait and they'll eventually hit
your category.

Today it was identifying Broadway musicals from a list of songs in
the show, from lest known to best known. If you identified the musical with the
first song, it was for 10 points, if you needed two songs it was 8 points, etc. I
got every single question with the first song (except The Producers which I
needed two songs to identify), while all the panelists struggled with each set of
songs.

Ok--so I don't know anything about the Van Allen belt, but I know
that "Little House of Uncle Thomas" is from The King and I!

Tony and I talked a bit about bringing the show to San Francisco and
what is involved in that. I offered some suggestions of possible venues that would
work and be the right size for the show and hope to follow through with that in the coming
weeks.

After we left Skirball, we drove through town looking for a place to
eat, and ended up at a Mexican restaurant, where we filled up on burritos and tamales and
really good chips. Then off to the airport, onto the plane, and home again.

We'd been gone only 36 hours but sure filled those hours. We
also came home to only three dogs. Scrappy and Scooby are gone. I have to
admit that though they were real cuties, it sure is more peaceful around here tonight!